


Necessary

by starkraving



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Denial, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Not A Fix-It, Protective Beauregard, Team as Family, will be jossed soon I imagine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 14:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15293811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkraving/pseuds/starkraving
Summary: Molly is dead and Beauregard wants to do something about it. Whether it’s physically possible or not doesn’t seem to matter. Caleb, luckily, is well acquainted with death, and he knows the logistics of it. In more ways than one. AKA: Caleb has to talk Beauregard down and be a leader. And it sucks.





	Necessary

Nott reaches the body first. She doesn’t even wait for Lorenzo and his crew to be further than two-hundred feet out before she breaks away from Caleb at a full animal-like sprint that turns her into a tiny, cloaked blur. Her feet kick up a flurry of dirt and snow as she rushes to Mollymauk’s side and even from a distance Caleb can hear her saying, over and over, “No. Oh no, oh no, oh no…”

Caleb looks at Beauregard.

She’s bloody and wounded, her smooth brown skin red and cracked open in places where the frostbite from Lorenzo’s attack literally froze and split her flesh along her shoulder and bicep. Blood is running hot down her arm and dripping, steaming in the cold, off her bandaged fingers. She doesn’t seem to notice. She’s glassy-eyed and breathing hard, staring into an empty middle distance while her breath clouds the air on her lips.

As the snow falls, gathering in her short, knotted hair, and catching in her eyelashes, Caleb Widogast thinks, distantly and dispassionately, that Beauregard has never looked more dangerous or more beautiful than she does right now. She’s feral in her hatred and he can see it like writing out a new spell – inscribed it there in here dark, adrenaline-bright eyes – the narrative of her bloody-fisted and suicidal revenge story. 

He gives her a moment, just one, to breathe.

Then he says, “You better help Keg. We need to get the horses and go.”

That breaks Beau out of it.

Her eyes snap to him and for a moment there’s this… fury there in her so deep and terrible that any other day Caleb would flinch, but this day is unlike other days and the indifferent screaming hollow that has supplanted all other emotions is unmoved. He grabs her elbow and her shoulder in two hands, her frozen skin thawing under his fingers as he pushes the simplest possible warming cantrip into her blood.

“We need to move right now because that bastard, the one who killed our friend, he will expect us to sit here and bury our dead and lick our wounds but we are not going to do that.” Caleb grabs her by the shoulders, make sure she’s looking at him. “We’re going to ride around them, beat them to Shady Creek, and find some way to get our friends, back. Do you understand? Beau?”

“I got it,” she grits. “You’ll get Molly?”

Caleb’s throat closes a little, but he won’t argue this moment.

“Yes. I’ll go to Molly.”

Beau nods and rushes across the road to help Keg who is kneeling, seemingly catatonic in the road.

Caleb watches them as he walks across the road with his hands clenched at his sides. His heart hammers so hard in his throat he’s terrified the next words out of his mouth are going to be a scream. Beau is yelling something, but he can’t hear it. She’s muffled. The world muted around him suddenly and slowed – the crunch of grit and snow beneath his boots, the smell of burnt leather and blood, the sting of the wind.

Nott is kneeling next to Molly with her small green hands fisted in a part of his many-colored coat. Snow is already starting the gather on the body. Caleb forces himself not to look away, but instead kneels down beside Nott and takes in every single detail. He commits them to his near eidetic memory, though it will haunt him to do so.

He catalogs the pieces of Mollymauk’s death.

He died with his eyes open. Lorenzo’s glaive punched straight through Molly’s ribs, no doubt pinning one lung like a butterfly wing to the back of the tiefling’s chest cavity, just missing his heart. Caleb can see that because, during the kill, Lorenzo must have _twisted_ the blade inside Molly like a pry bar, cracking his ribs apart and wrenching them open. His plain white tunic is soaked red around the wound, snow melting into the blood. There’s blood on Mollymauk’s lips and chin where he choked it up, hemorrhaging fatally in his death throes.

It must have been agony.

There’s no suggestion of pain on his face. Death has smoothed his features. His dark purple hair is frozen against the side of his head in some places, the nape of his neck and shoulders frostbitten and cracked, just like Beau’s where he took the brunt of that cold spell across his back, trying to shield himself with his jacket. The carnival glass scimitar and the golden blade from the Labentha Swamp lay gleaming in the mud and snow. There’s a long arc of gleaming red in the snow where Lorenzo must have whipped the glaive around, throwing the last of Molly’s heartblood into the snow.

“Caleb,” Nott whispers, so softly he almost doesn’t hear it. “Molly’s dead.”

“I know.”

“Do you think he’ll just… come back? Like he did before?”

“No. Not this time.”

“Yes I… I didn’t really think he would.” Nott stares blankly down at Molly’s empty features. “Can we do anything for him?”

“No.”

Nott nods like she expected that. “Do you want to run now? Or fight?”

Caleb says nothing for a moment.

 _It’s time to go,_ he thinks, but what he does is sit forward. He reaches out gently, and sets his fingertips against Molly’s eyelid’s, the tickling of eyelashes against his skin like an electric shock to his nervous-system, but he firmly draws his eyes shut. Holds there for a moment, using the faintest cooling cantrip to speed the process. Molly’s eyes stay closed then. Caleb is relieved. He thinks he would have thown up if they hadn’t.  

To Nott, he says, quietly, “I want to hunt down Lorenzo.”

“Oh good,” Nott says. She turns her head finally to look at Caleb and he can see now her strange, impish face is blank. Her yellow eyes gleam wetly in the half light of morning. “Me too. I think I would really, really like that, Caleb.”

“I’m sorry, Nott.”

“Why?”

“I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t hold them all.”

“No, Caleb.” Nott sounds horrified. “You did everything you could. This isn’t your –”

He hears horses approaching and turns in time to see Beau riding up fast on one of their remaining horses, galloping full speed. She dismounts at speed, yanking something off the back of the horse and it takes Caleb a moment to realize it’s the Platinum Dragon tapestry. She jogs over with it under her arm and moves to kneel on the opposite side of Molly, unrolling the tapestry on the snow and with absolutely no preamble, she crouches down, hooks her hands under Molly’s shoulders and starts pulling the body onto the would-be shroud.

“Should we bury him? Do we have time?” Nott whispers.

Beau stops then, head jerking up.

“What? We’re not fuckin’ burying him. We’re taking him with us.”

Caleb puts a hand on Nott’s shoulder before she can say anything. Beau is already tucking the tapestry around Molly’s body. She has a length of hemp rope slung over her shoulder to secure it. She brusquely takes Molly’s wrists and presses his arms against his chest, never once looking at his face while she works. There’s blood all over her hands now. She ignores it and keeps working. She sniffs, wiping her brow and leaves a red smear across her forehead but she doesn’t notice.

“Bury him,” she mutters. “Like that went so fucking good for him the first time.”

Beauregard arranges Mollymauk with the gruff impatience of a sober person dealing with a drunk. She wipes her palms on her pants, pushes Molly’s hair off his forehead, pulls the tapestry shut around his chest. As the moments tick by, Nott wordlessly looks up at Caleb but he’s frozen, his legs rooted to the earth while Beauregard wraps Mollymauk in a shining blanket of purple and platinum thread.

“Caleb,” Nott says softly, touching his wrist.

Behind them, Keg walks up with the other two horses on leads. She doesn’t say anything though. She just waits, the woman that Lorenzo spared purely to let her live with Mollymauk’s death which, honestly, suggests more about the constitution of Keg’s sensibilities than Caleb ever suspected. He feels Nott tug on his sleeve this time, staring desperately up at him. He can’t wait any more.

“Beauregard,” Caleb says at last.

“You just gonna stand there watching me, or you gonna help?”

Caleb walks over. Beau ignores him. She’s sliding and arm under Molly’s shoulders, pulling him into her arms a little, sliding the rope from her other shoulder. Caleb touches that shoulder before she can get the rope off, halting her.

“Beau, that’s enough. Stop.” He kneels beside her, slowly, like you approach a wounded animal. “It’s okay. I’ll take care of Molly now.”

Her head snaps around again.

“What the fuck does that mean?” she says, eyes burning. “You’ll take care of him? You’ll do what?”

“He’s dead, Beau.” Caleb holds her stare. “What do you think it means?”

She wrenches her arm out of his hand and shoves him, right in the chest, knocking him back so he has to catch himself with one hand. She did it so fast he didn’t see it until he was reeling. His sternum aches from the force she put behind it.

“No! Fuck you. This isn’t done. Just _wait_ a fucking second.” Her fist comes up near her head, her face screwing up in pain and rage and something animal behind her teeth. She unfurls her fingers, her eyes meeting his again. “In Zadash, at the Victory Pit, they… they brought people back from the dead. Okay? Right? Jester said… she said sometimes you can bring people back even if it’s been a while. We can do that. We go after these assholes. We go to Shady Creek. We fucking get our friends back and then we…”

“Beau,” Caleb cuts in. “No.”

“What the fuck do you mean ‘no’?” She apoplectic. “You’re a fucking wizard or whatever. You know dead isn’t always dead. Molly’s, like, already been dead once. We can still –”

“Beauregard,” Caleb interrupts yet again, speaking firmly and evenly. “We cannot prioritize Mollymauk, who is dead, over Jester, Fjord, and Yasha who are alive and in peril right this very second.”

“I’m not forgetting about them! I’m saying we don’t have to just give up! We can do both, asshole!”

“We need to leave now,” he says, staying gentle in the face of her shouting. “We can’t bring a body with us at the speeds we must move. You know that.”

“We don’t leave people behind,” Beau hisses. “That’s the fucking deal.”

That stings. It’s a barb, a knife twist. Molly’s words like nails in Caleb’s brain but just as quickly, Molly’s voice again in his head, _There’ll be time for that later._

“He’s dead, Beau. And if we waste time now, his dying will be for nothing. Yasha, Fjord, and Jester will also be lost. He’s gone. We need to –”

“But he’s not gone!” Beau shouts, furious. Her grip around Molly’s shoulders gets visibly tighter, her fingers sinking into the purple and silver embroidery and fabric. “Not yet! He’s not gone unless you fucking give up on him right now and – what the fuck are you doing?”

“Move,” Caleb snaps.

He’s pulling the tapestry open, pulling Molly’s slack arm from the blanket. He takes one slim lavender wrist in his hand, ignoring the tacky stick of blood between his fingers, how cool Molly’s skin his against his. Molly’s hand is actually slimmer and more delicate than his own but creased at the palm with calluses, his fingertips scarred in tiny cuts and pricks. Caleb jostling the body has caused Molly’s head to loll against Beau’s chest and if it weren’t for the blood, he might be asleep.

“Nott. Give me a knife.”

Beau seizes his wrist before Nott can comply.

“What,” she says softly, “the fuck are you doing?”

Her grip on his wrist is so tight his feels his bones strain. He knows she can and will snap his arm like a twig if he says the wrong thing now.

“You said I’m a wizard, Beauregard.” He holds her gaze, unblinking. “You know where I trained. You know what I’m capable of and I am telling you as a student of the arcane that Mollymauk is beyond me and he is likely beyond any cleric we can reach in ten day’s time, because ten days is all we have to reasonably make any use of his body as it lies.” He waits, but Beau does not snap his arm so he goes on. “We cannot take him with us, but we don’t have to. There are other methods. More difficult, more arcane, but… you’re right. We can do both. You’re just doing it wrong, Beau.”

There’s a long, ugly, silence.

Beau’s eyes are dark, blood on her forehead, sweat frozen on her cheek.

“Are you lying to me, Caleb? Are you lying to make me leave him?” Her grip tightens, blood bruises already forming. “Because if you are and I find out later, I will break your fuckin’ jaw.”

 “I’m not lying to you.”

She lets go of his wrist.

Nott, understandably wary, hands one of her knives to Caleb.

“Thank you, Nott.” Caleb settles his weight, sliding his hand from Molly’s wrist to hold his palm, using his thumb to unfurl Molly’s nerveless fingers, isolating his pinky. He shows Beau the knife. “We only need a small piece for the spell that would restore him. That’s it.”

“So just leave him here for the goddamn animals to rip apart?” Beau whispers. “That’s your plan?”

“As you said, he might prefer not to be buried again.”

“This is sick.”

“This is necessary. Do you have the stomach for it or not?”

There’s another long, agonizing silence where Caleb waits to have his jaw broken or not.

Then, “Don’t fucking cut off his pinky finger, you idiot. Gimme that.” She takes the knife from Caleb’s hand. “You always take off the pointer finger first if you gotta choose a finger. Remember that if you ever get kidnapped and some sick fuck makes you choose.” She readjusts her grip around Molly, almost protective. “And I’m not gonna watch you butcher this. Back off, noodle arms.”

“You’ll take care of it?” Caleb asks quietly.

Beau is staring down at Molly now, cradled unintentionally in her arms. Her expression is unreadable, her grip on the knife already bloody.

“I’ll take care of it,” she says.

“If we resolve this fast enough… we’ll come back this way and collect the body. I promise you.”

“Whatever,” Beau says.

Caleb has to look away when she does it.

Beauregard finishes shrouding the body. She does it with uncharacteristic gentleness, fretting small things like the corners being tucked in tight but not too tight, the ropes secure, but not so secure you could get out of them. (“Just in case,” she snaps.) She wipes blood from his face with her fingers, cursing softly, through her teeth, over and over. Her scarred-rough hands unsuited to soft work, like she’s never touched anything that carefully before in her life. Finally, they lay Mollymauk to rest at the top of one of the hills.

Ten minutes later, they move out at a gallop, speeding toward Shady Creek Run. Beauregard has a band of gold and an purple fabric around her arm, cut from the only un-bloodied part of Molly’s jacket. Caleb thinks, in the near future, she’s going to break his jaw. 

He’ll hold still for her when she does.

**Author's Note:**

> questions and comments are extremely appreciated and will keep me rolling. note: this fic assumes caleb does not have any spells that can do anything for Molly at all including mild necromancy like Gentle Repose etc. he's basically explaining that Raise the Death is unlikely to work on their time table because they both need the body, the supplies, the cleric, and they need all that in 10 days. But Resurrection and other higher order spells don't have those restrictions. So he's not lying to Beau, but whether he believes they'll actually be able to pull it off later is another question entirely.


End file.
